Special Dead

by Patrick Freivald

  Chapter

  34

  Tuesday morning, Sam’s jaw dropped when Devon walked into the lounge. “Holy crap, is that peach fuzz?”

  Ani joined them at the door, going so far as to run her hand over Devon’s head—which was, indeed, sprouting a covering of downy, blonde hair, almost too fine to see.

  “Wow,” Ani said. “How do you feel?”

  Devon took a breath, held it, and let it out. “It almost feels like that does something...but it doesn’t.” She ran her fingertips over her scalp. “And that’s new.” She rubbed her fingertips together in front of her eyes. “Everything feels...tingly.”

  “Tingly?” Sam asked.

  “Less dull.” She looked at Ani. “Kind of like what you described, I think. I feel a little, well, normal.”

  “Well,” Mr. Cummings said from inside, “you look dead enough. Class is starting. Let’s go.”

  The next morning, Devon’s hair had grown a full inch, and her cheeks had actual color. By the afternoon she was breathing, and after school she asked for a meal. They brought her one, which she took back to her room to eat.

  She ate again the next morning and at lunch. At two o’clock, she coughed, then shuddered. Ani froze, memories of Joe washing over her, as Devon hunched over, gasping.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked.

  She looked up, her face lit with a dazzling, brilliant smile. “Yeah. I think so. Check this out.” She grabbed Sam’s hand, pulled out two fingers, and touched them to her neck, just under her jaw.

  Sam’s eyes widened. “That’s a pulse.”

  Devon’s fierce grin punctuated her reply. “My heart’s beating, bitches.”

  * * *

  Saturday morning, they crowded into the lab. Ani’s mom stood next to the smart board, her smile triumphant. “That,” she pointed at a block of cells, “is a group of virus-free, healthy human skin. Anyone want to guess where I got it?”

  Devon raised her hand, and Ani’s mom swatted it down.

  “Anyone who doesn’t already know?”

  “Devon’s cheek?” Sam asked.

  Devon laughed.

  “Close,” her mom said.

  “Yeah,” Devon dimpled her cheeks with her fingers. “But not these ones.”

  “So what does that mean?” Mrs. Weller asked. “She’s cured?”

  Ani’s mom shook her head. “No, she still has infected cells. We need to wait and see how this plays out, but it’s very, very promising. Phase IX kills ZV, and, coupled with regenerative therapy, might make the damaged or dead healthy again.”

  “Mom, I think you just cured cancer.”

  She beamed. “Let’s be cautious. We’ll give it a few days, and keep Devon here in the lab where we can monitor her closely, and we’ll see how it goes.” She looked at the picture on the board, then smiled at Ani. “But yeah. We may have just cured lots of things.”

  * * *

  That night, her mom came in the door, wrapped her in a hug, and spun her around. They said nothing, just giggled and laughed and hugged until they collapsed at last on the couch, still laughing.

  Ani shook herself to sober up. Once her elation had calmed to the point where she could speak, she licked her lips and asked, “What now?”

  “Well, like I said, we give it some time, see what happens. Devon’s body isn’t yet virus-free, and even if we eliminate every symptom, if she’s still a carrier they’ll never let her free.”

  “Ouch,” Ani said. “That goes for me, too, huh?”

  She nodded.

  “So how’d you do it?”

  Her mom chuckled. “Um, it’s complicated. Like, twenty years of work complicated. The short version is that we tricked her body into acting like yours did for the first fourteen years of your life, then stripped the virus of its protein sheath and killed it with highly toxic levels of some really nasty antivirals. Ironically, it was the virus itself that kept her alive—you know, alive-ish—while we killed it. As it weakened, we could back off on the antivirals and let the regeneratives do the repair.”

  “What’s your prognosis?”

  “She has almost no trace of the virus left in her body. I anticipate that in two to three days, she’ll be a normal twenty-year-old girl—in a seventeen-year-old body.”

  Ani ran her tongue over her teeth. “That’s got some interesting ramifications.”

  Her mom didn’t reply.

  * * *

  By Wednesday, Devon’s ZV levels were undetectable. By Friday, all traces of Phase IX were gone from her body. Saturday morning, exactly two weeks after the Phase IX treatment, Dr. Banerjee announced to the lab staff that Devon had been cured, but ordered her into a two-week quarantine in a hermetically-sealed room just to be safe.

  Saturday morning, they all lined up at the lab for Phase IX. Mrs. Weller went first, then Mr. Cummings, then Sam, then Mike. Each treatment took twenty minutes.

  Ani walked into the lab, hugged her mom, and sat down on the bed. They had her lie back and strapped an IV to her left arm. She didn’t feel the needle go in, nor the fluid that followed. When the bag was empty, her mom pulled out the needle.

  “That’s it?” Ani asked.

  “Yup. That’s it.”

  “Seems...anticlimactic.”

  Her mom frowned. “Be grateful.”

  “Oh, I am.”

  They hugged, and Ani whispered into her ear. “What about you?”

  “Last night.”

  They separated, and her mom kissed her forehead. “Now go play. I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do.”

  Ani made it halfway to the door.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah, sweetie?”

  “What about all the zombies downstairs?”

  Her eyes flicked toward the camera, then back to Ani. “They’re next. We didn’t make enough for everyone right away, and we only have enough baths for a few at a time. Figure two, three months, and there won’t be any need for this place, ever again.”

  * * *

  That night, Ani hammered on the piano, the first movement of Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor, a joyous, bouncy celebration in musical form. She heard a voice, so she lifted her fingers from the keys.

  “What?”

  “Can you come here a minute?” her mom called from the bedroom.

  “Sure. I’ll be right in.”

  She got up and skipped through the door into the bedroom. Her mom held up a black and white dress that Ani had never seen before. “I have a function with some bigwigs at CDC tomorrow, and I want to alter the buttons on this. Hold it, would you?” She held it up between Ani and the security camera. “Right like that.”

  Ani grabbed it and held it.

  “Good.” Her mom let go and picked up the scissors. As her hand came around the dress, a surgical scalpel fell out of her sleeve and into her left hand. “Now just hold still.”

  Ani grunted as the scalpel entered her abdomen and smiled to hide a hiss of pain as it drew a line from her navel to the base of her sternum. “What’s wrong with the buttons as they are now?”

  Her mom pushed her fingers into the cut, then up. “There’s just something about them I don’t quite like.” On the last word, she tore her hand out, and Ani grunted in surprise. Her mom held a microchip attached to a tiny canister, covered in viscous zombie not-quite-blood. In one fluid motion she dropped it into the sewing box, where Ani saw one just like it, wiped her hand on Ani’s jeans, and picked up a button.

  She sewed it on, taking the time to trace two letters—ZV—on Ani’s stomach with her fingertip—then pulled Ani’s shirt down to cover the wound. She stood, took the dress, held it up to her neck, and smiled. “What do you think?”

  “Better.”

  “That’s what I thought. Now get in the bath—healing is critical at this juncture.”

  “Okay, mom.”

  Ani took care to shield her abdomen from the camera in her bedroom as she took off her clothes and slid into the icy, putrid liquid, her mind aflame.

/>   * * *

  On Thursday, the Special Dead ate lunch together. The electric atmosphere skyrocketed when the media got wind of Devon’s condition—and though Dr. Banerjee was fit to be tied, nobody else seemed to care that TV crews lined the building and news helicopters circled overhead. Ani’s mom, decked in a full hazmat suit to keep quarantine, wheeled in a meal of salad, breadsticks, and soup donated by the Olive Garden. Soft foods, greens, and soup seemed to be the safest choice as their digestive systems ramped up to full functionality.

  Ani had tried for days to isolate her mom, get her somewhere that they could talk. With cameras everywhere and the increasing festivities, the opportunity eluded her. Monday morning she put on a blouse just so she could lose a button in the lounge. She beat her mom home by a matter of hours, and rummaged through the sewing box in plain view of the cameras, but she found nothing—not even a button that matched. Tuesday they’d all been moved to their own quarantine, separated from Devon by a polycarbonate window thick enough to stop a truck.

  Mike and Devon spent a lot of time talking through the phone on the wall, looking at each other through the glass. As his mind healed his memory returned, and he re-learned the truth about Ani, her mom, Dylan, and prom. Ani tried to talk to him, but he just gave her a hurt look and walked away. She left him a note, asking not for forgiveness but just to talk when he felt he was ready. Insight into his mental state she got second-hand from Sam.

  “This is all new to him, remember? And there’s a lot to be angry for.”

  “I know,” Ani said, running her fingertips along the tile as they walked. “I’m amazed you forgave me.”

  “Who said I forgave you?” Ani shot her a look, and Sam stuck out her tongue. “Seriously, though, life’s too short for grudges. If anything I’ve learned that.” They hugged. “You did what you thought you had to, and you followed your heart.” She chuckled. “I guess you didn’t read enough of the classics.”

  “What do you mean?” Ani asked.

  Sam ran a hand through her hair. “Following your heart’s a recipe for disaster, every time. And yet, it’s what makes us human.”

  “Do you think so?”

  She snorted. “What the hell do I know?” She nodded toward the end of the hall, where Mr. Cummings walked hand-in-hand with Mrs. Weller. Neither of their marriages had survived their deaths, and a twenty-year difference in age crumbled under their shared experience. “They’re the worldly ones. Ask them.”

  “I don’t think they want to be pestered by kids about now.” Ani turned and walked the other way, and Sam followed.

  * * *

  “WHERE IS SHE?” Mike yelled, his baritone voice booming down the hallway. Ani jumped up and took a step toward the door.

  “Whoa, there, kiddo,” Mrs. Weller said from around the corner. “Where’s who?”

  Ani peered around the doorframe. Mike hulked over Mrs. Weller, his face a mask of hopeless rage.

  “Devon’s gone. They took her.” He hammered the wall with his fist. “WHERE DID YOU TAKE HER?”

  Mrs. Weller’s laugh disarmed him, and he dropped his arms. “Nowhere, silly. They let her go.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “She’s outside, talking to reporters with her mom and Doctor Banerjee.”

  He grinned. “Seriously? She’s out?”

  Ani ducked back into what passed for a living room under quarantine and sat on a folding chair seconds before Mike walked in, jaw slack in surprise. Tuned to CNN, the TV showed a close-up of Devon, who wore a knit cap to cover her pseudo-bald head, hand-in-hand with her mother behind a podium. The bottom of the screen read ZOMBIE GIRL CURED.

  “Look,” Devon said, staring daggers at a reporter. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I just want to get on with my life, get back to being a girl, you know?”

  “What do you plan on doing now?” a man yelled.

  “Final exams,” she said to laughter. “Seriously, though. I have, like, three Regents exams to take next week or I don’t graduate.” They laughed again, but she didn’t join them.

  “What about my baby?” a female voice shrieked. “Where’s Lydia?”

  Dr. Banerjee stepped forward and took the microphone, his face impassive, his voice calm. “Miss Stuber, your daughter was not in the first or second rounds of treatment. We can only make the cure so fast, and have not geared up to full-scale production. I assure you that your daughter will be home within a month or two.”

  Sam grunted.

  “I thought she was dead,” Ani said.

  “Me, too,” Mr. Cummings said from behind her. “And what about Teah?”

  His question smothered the mood.

  “I’ll ask Mom,” Ani said.

  But Sarah didn’t know.

  * * *

  The next morning, every one of them tested negative for ZV. They were released from tight quarantine but not the lab, so they held a party in the lounge. Everyone attended: the guards, Mr. Benson, even Mr. Clark, who looked out of place in jeans and a black turtle neck. Ani had a hard time reconciling the jovial, gray-goateed man with the silver-clad demon who’d immolated Bill and his cronies.

  He didn’t kill them. I did. All these deaths are mine. Mine and Mom’s.

  A shadow clouded her vision. She looked up into Mike’s eyes and drowned in an emerald sea.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” he said.

  “Hi.” It was all she could manage.

  He sat next to her, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. He patted her arm. “You look so sad. This is a party.”

  “I was just thinking about all the people who aren’t here. Because of me.”

  “Yeah.” He took a bite of cake and didn’t offer her any.

  About right.

  He swallowed. “But look at all the good that’s going to come of it, too. I’m not a God person, not really, but maybe there’s a plan in all this.”

  “Maybe.” Her voice was as noncommittal as her shrug.

  He put his arm around her shoulders, and she hugged him. As her hand pressed into his chest, she shivered.

  Do you have a chip-thing, too, Mike?

  She looked up at her mom. Sarah’s head twitched to the side, the barest of shakes, and then she smiled. It might as well have been telepathy: I took care of it, sweetie.

  Mike rubbed her shoulder. “There you go worrying again. I can feel it in your muscles.”

  She tried to relax.

  “Better, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Chapter

  36

  Ani got out of the car and smiled up at the mid-June sun, her eyes closed. She couldn’t get used to the feeling of warmth shining down onto her face, couldn’t take it for granted. A beep shattered her reverie.

  “Get in the car, sweetie,” her mom said from the driver’s seat. “You’ve got your precalc final in an hour.”

  She got in and buckled her belt. After years riding nothing but a bus, she felt constricted by the shoulder strap in a way she didn’t like. As the car pulled out of the lab, she killed the radio.

  “Can we talk?”

  Sarah shot her a glance, then turned left. “Now’s not a good time, sweetie.” She pulled out her phone and punched buttons with her thumb. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” She handed the phone to Ani.

  CAR BUGGED. HOUSE. LAB.

  Ani deleted the letters and typed a reply.

  WHY?

  She held up the screen so that her mom could see it, deleted her question, and gave Sarah the phone.

  THEY ARE WATCHING US.

  WHO?

  DR B. DR F.

  WHY?

  IDK.

  Thought for a minute. ARE WE SAFE?

  NO. She showed her the last word, then tucked the phone in her pocket. “You’ve got ten minutes tops to say hello, sweetie, then we’ve got to go.”

  Ani waved her off as she got out of the car. “I know. Come back in twenty minutes.”

  She made it all the way up th
e sidewalk before her mom pulled away. The drapes in the house next door—no longer the Washingtons, but strangers she’d never met—shied back as she glanced at them. Yeah, yeah, stare at the ex-zombie. The events of the past few days left her longing for the bath, if only to be alone for a while.

  The door opened before she could knock. Tiffany looked weird with firebrand hair and around twenty extra pounds and weirder still with a giant smile.

  “Ani!” She wrapped Ani in a squeeze more enthusiastic than anything before prom.

  “Hey, Tiff.” She disentangled herself and peered inside. “Where are the girls?”

  “Cribs.” She jerked her head toward the kitchen. “C’mon in, I’ll get you a Coke.”

  Ani popped the tab and slurped the sticky-sweet liquid gratefully. Thirst was as alien and as wonderful as freedom or breathing. “Thanks.” She took another sip and peered over the cribs at the pink-swaddled bundles within. How wrinkly little troll-things could be so cute, she didn’t know, but that didn’t stop them.

  Ani wrinkled her nose and eyed the ashtray on the counter. Tiff scooped it up and dumped it in the garbage and almost managed to look innocent when she turned around.

  “Mom. What can I do?”

  Ani opened her mouth, had nothing to say, and closed it.

  Tiffany snorted. “Fine, don’t believe me. Whatever.”

  Ani stepped back into the living room and flopped down on the couch. To think the last time I was here, her mom was passed out on this couch, and Tiff was upstairs drowning in her own vomit....

  “Are you coming to graduation, Tiff?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “When’s that?”

  “Next Saturday. It’s supposed to totally be a madhouse. All the major networks, some religious crazies, a couple of state senators and other rubberneckers...there might be room for family members to watch.”

  Tiffany rolled her eyes. “Would you forgive me if I took a pass? Not for nothing, but crowds suck. I think I’ll be out of town.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you a bit, but I had to invite you. Come to the party on the twenty-fifth?”